I checked if they had joined the Internet blackout, two days ago, but they didn't -the home page looked as usual. But I could not log in, or rather, I could log in, but any attempt to post brought an error message. I had thought about posting my comment of SOPA/PIPA at the forum, first.

I do not think the forums are locked forever, though - FFN would need to give a notice if the planned to do that. Most likely, they are introducing another code change, or are doing maintenance behind the scenes, and it will take them a while to get everything working again. At least I hope. -____-

FFN has done things without giving notice before. Remember the Thanksgiving Purge? It would be nice to see a little note from the admins at least saying they're aware of the problem and are working to solve it.

Meanwhile, I'm surprised and saddened to learn that Sen. Al Franken supports PIPA -- at least i think that's the Senate version of the bill. I guess it all depends on where you make your money. His is in books and movies.

I agree with you: letting people know what they are up to has never been a part of their political culture! I did not realize anything was amiss with them. I read a couple of stories there during the time you are talking about. I didn't try to do anything else.

Well, they never gave us any note on anything, but hey, they did have some longer problems with logging in and posting, in the past. But I agree, it would be nice if they at least would put up a status site, like live journal has, where you can check what is going on if the site does not work as it is supposed to.

Meanwhile, one can only hope...

Meanwhile, I'm surprised and saddened to learn that Sen. Al Franken supports PIPA -- at least i think that's the Senate version of the bill. I guess it all depends on where you make your money. His is in books and movies.

You could still E-mail him. I mean, even for a person who make their money from the content industry, it should be clear that censoring the Internet and making it illegal or dangerous to link to possibly infringing content will kill lots and lots of possible ways to advertise and make money. And in any case, the more people calling in and telling their Senators they hate these bills the better the impact. If it has none, at least you tried... (and I will put my money where my mouth is and write a letter to my European representatives in the EU parliament who are responsible for agreeing or repealing ACTA).

From what I've been reading and hearing in the TV commentary about these bills, the Congresspeople involved have not actually read them in detail or had it pointed out to them that this bill will do more than get rid of sites that sell (or give away) pirated movies and music.

Several Senators were surprised to learn that the photos they used on their own websites were copyrighted and would be illegal under this bill. A quick email saying we hate the bill does no good, because intellectual property does need some protection on the net. We have to explain to these people what we're for (free speech and fair use of copyrighted material) and against -- copying someone else's book or movie and selling it.

Unfortunately, the distinction between "what we're for" and "what we're against" is not that easy. The US Supreme Court has just decided, that books and art that had already fallen to the public domain can be placed under copyright again. There are copyright rules that are positively gagging and disowning to the authors of the material, like the rule that scientists, who post their research to magazines like nature for peer review, lose the right to post that paper or article anywhere else. They have to buy the rights from the magazine. There is the issue of suppressing leaked content, that is, copyrighted business papers that reveal abusive practices - the owners of the papers can try to suppress the distribution of these papers to the public by their copyright claims, and can do so even under the existing laws. And even more, there have been examples that some companies have caused youtube to take down (parody) videos with some of their content that were perfectly legal under Fair Use rules - which proves that SOPA and PIPA could and would probably be abused the same way.

And, as the shut down of Megaupload shows, even under existing laws, the USA can enforce the shutdown of content sharing sites that also hold infringing content, if they just wish. The shut down of pirate bay and kino.to proved the same.

The existing laws are more than enough to protect copyrighted content. In fact, in my opinion, they would need to be changed to be less restrictive on the possibilities of fair Use and the long time endurance of copyright, and should strengthen artists and authors against the copyright holders, meaning the content industry - which, BTW, SOPA and PIPA would not do in any way). What the bills would do, however, was effectively make it possible to shut each and every uncomfortable blog or social media network down or block access to it (and stop the financial flow and business to it) if anywhere in it somebody posted infringing content within it. Which would be easy to ensure, at need. AND make everybody on the web who wishes to post any content or download and remix and any not clearly commercially bought and distributed content quite afraid and unsure if he or she could be sued for committing a felony by downloading or distributing this stuff. The Chilling effect would be huge.

The problem is, I think that some of these senators and representatives (or at least the lobbyists behind the legislation) have a pretty good idea what the bill would do - restrict all that wild uncontrollable and most uncomfortable distributing and sharing of information and content and opinion and knowledge the web in its current form is all about. They would probably like to go back to the old ways of television - clear sender here, clear consumers there. Far more easy to control, that way.

(sorry for the several edits - it's late and far beyond bedtime for me, I fear)

And sorry for the long rant yesterday, I should not have hijacked your lj. However, I just found a comment on Niel Hayden's making light blog that better says what I wanted to say than I ever could. Making Light.

It's really frustrating, isn't it? I tried to log into Fictionpress and see if the forums there are working, but it's the same - I can log in, but not access any of the forums. FFN seems to ghave real problems, there.